Bruce, your words are eloquent and your "best option for most of us..."is accurate. However, one of your underlying premises,"A school in a neighborhood that is 95% poor and black is going to have a poor and black student body. It's not racism. It's an economic issue," is flawed. The legacy of 400+ years of institutional racism have conspired to create and maintain the existence of neighborhoods (based on nothing more than race) that will be poor and black/brown. Granted, racism is a tool of capitalist economics, but it is racism nevertheless.

Thank you! You are so right! Let's acknowledge, then lose, the baggage. For that to succeed, we need our young people to shift the paradigm of engagement that currently controls the city's politics and culture. Where are you, young people? Step up, and make us baggage-ladened older folks step aside.